Webhosting providers who do you use?

Advise for choosing a webhost!

Originally posted by Kurt Hulst
okay so what do you all think about these companies that offer 10GB storage 200 GB bandwidth. For like 6-8 bucks a month. David Drummond told me his point of view a bout a year ago. what other opinions are there.
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I'll tell you guys what I told Kurt back then. I hope you guys don't think I am trying to jack the thread to get everyone over to Dryline Hosting. We would love to have you, but more importantly, I would like to see you make an informed decision about ANY host you go with rather than hear another horror story in a couple of months. Being in the business, I feel like I am in a position to give some "inside" advise.

Regarding what Kurt said, when you see these massive packages or unlimited packages for only a few dollars.....

Think about this....hard drive space is finite. If any of you guys have found any infinite space hard drives, please let me know where to get them! :wink: ).

Ok, so the average webserver on the market today usually has a 100gig hard drive. Those can cost, say on average of $250 month.

Now lets say you start populating that with accounts that are paying $5/month for 10gigs of space. That means you could put 10 of those accounts on that server without overselling it, bringing in a total income of $50.

So how do they pay for that server? Well, they oversell it. A fact of the hosting world is that 95% of your accounts NEVER use the full amount of space allocated to them. They bank on that and oversell, it's done all the time in the hosting business because it's so competetive. The question is...how much do they oversell?

You can safely oversell a server to a certain point. The problem often is that with the bottom feeder hosts (as they are referred to in the hosting industry) usually GROSSLY oversell to the point things are moving at a crawl. Some people get mad and leave. Those hosts don't really care because after all, your only $5/mo to them and there is someone else coming in to take your place. Often with these type of hosts, in the long term things go way downhill, support becomes lacking or non-existant and they eventually fold, sometimes without warning.

Good hosts that oversell carefully watch the server loads and balances and stop populating the servers way before they reach full capacity. With us, that number is 75% of server capacity. Once they reach that amount they start populating a new server.

As for the ones that offer unlimited space and/or bandwidth... I participate on a forum for web host business owners, and across the board those hosts are looked at very unfavorably, as the worst of the worst in the industry.


All that said, before you sign up with anyone, fire off some inquisitive emails, see how long it takes to get a response and was it answered to your satisfaction? Do the same thing if they have a forum, sign up and ask questions. Read around their forum, see what kind of help they offer, etc. Make sure they have at least a 30 day money back guarantee so if you sign up and don't like the lay of the landscape there, you can get your money back and start over someplace else.

In the end, remember this....you get what you pay for. If your paying pennies for what seems like a "too good to be true" deal, it probably is and don't expect to get much in the way of help and support in return.

Ask yourself, do you want cheap cheap cheap, even if it doesn't work all that great all the time and you have a hard time getting help? Or do you want value for your $$ and hosts that will watch you back on security and help you out when you need it?

EDIT: for spelling and typo corrections
 
I was saving this for our new site relaunch, but this seems like a good time....

For a limited time, use the coupon code STORMTRACK when signing up with us at Dryline Hosting and you will get 50% off any package we have for as long as your with us. Again, this will only be available for a limited short time. :wink:

Does not apply to Domain Names though, only hosting packages as we already have the domains priced at our cost now.[/url]

(sorry the signup form currently looks so bad, it's a hybrid result of upgrades that will be revamped in the coming relaunch)
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Whoa! I've been with Dryline for a few years now, and David has always done it right. I recommend this hosting service. With a 50% off forever offer I would RUN to get it before it goes away! At already very reasonable pricing that seems like a great deal.
 
I've got an ancient 300mhz beast of a puter for my webserver sitting at my feet. I have apache running on port 8080 to get around Cox's port blocking ;). One of these days I need to get a server on a reliable connection with fast upload, but I'll wait till I get more than a dozen hits a week :)

Aaron
 
100% uptime is obviously impossible, but six sigma reliability sure is something to shoot for. Would it be unreasonable for your hosting company to run 2 servers?

Honestly though, uptime has never been an issue for me. I've never seen my Yahoo hosted site down, then again I don't look at all the time. So I'd never know. And if it goes down for a few hours later night, I really don't care.
 
Thanks David for your input again.

Also on the topic of down time. Through the provider I use, I some how got a free service that lemails me to let me know when my site has been down and how long it was down for. Its called Kaneinternetseer, or somthing along those lines. Ipowerweb servers had gone down one time this summer for a few hours as they had a black out in CA. They were quick to responde as to the reason and havent had a major problem other than being down for 15 minutes for server update and reboot. They let me know what there doing, if i ask.

But these are good responses keep um coming.

EditHere the link to the seer thing http://www.internetseer.com/home/index.xtp...id=at9sJvLQHcY6
 
www.angeltowns.com

I joined with their free service (50 mb space, no ads) in June 2004, then bought their 100 mb service (1 time payment of something like $25) in November 2004. Since then they have had to stop offering such incredible deals and all their new packages now have a monthly charge, but they still have a pretty good "bang for the buck".

One thing I really like about them is their customer service. They are very prompt at responding to my emails with helpful advice. I like them a lot more than the other two hosts I tried for the Stoughton Piston Head Society site (Yahoo! GeoCities and Angelfire).
 
Originally posted by Kurt Hulst
Thanks David for your input again.

Also on the topic of down time. Through the provider I use, I some how got a free service that lemails me to let me know when my site has been down and how long it was down for. Its called Kaneinternetseer, or somthing along those lines. Ipowerweb servers had gone down one time this summer for a few hours as they had a black out in CA. They were quick to responde as to the reason and havent had a major problem other than being down for 15 minutes for server update and reboot. They let me know what there doing, if i ask.

But these are good responses keep um coming.

EditHere the link to the seer thinghttp://www.internetseer.com/home/index.xtp;jsessionid=at9sJvLQHcY6
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Kurt, Internetseer.com took it upon themselves to sign you up for their "free" services, that didn't come from your hosting provider. I think they farm the information from domain name registrations. They have took it upon themselves to sign me up on about half the domains I have without my consent and email me all the time. Funny thing is, the email me telling me my site is down, when I know it isn't and the server monitor I use that calls my cellphone says it isn't either. My personal opinion of them based on these tactics isn't very high. not only that, their standard monitoring checks your site once every hour.

If you are concerned enough about downtime that you really need monitoring, you need something that will check at least every 5 minutes, and AFAIK, the only ones that do that are paid services.

For the best monitoring services try websitepulse.com or altertra.com
 
Without a doubt, Dryline Hosting. And I'm not saying that because David is on this board. I've had several web hosting services in the past, Dryline has by far been the best.
 
Originally posted by Aaron Kennedy
I've got an ancient 300mhz beast of a puter for my webserver sitting at my feet. I have apache running on port 8080 to get around Cox's port blocking ;). One of these days I need to get a server on a reliable connection with fast upload, but I'll wait till I get more than a dozen hits a week :)

Aaron
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Geez Aaron, you should use Rossby, the greatest server known to man -- provided to us for free by the state taxpayers of Oklahoma!
 
Two thumbs up for Dryline Hosting! I just switched over this past week, after a billing dispute with my former host, addr.com. All I can say is that I should've done it sooner.

JB
 
Originally posted by David Drummond
I was saving this for our new site relaunch, but this seems like a good time....

For a limited time, use the coupon code STORMTRACK when signing up with us at Dryline Hosting and you will get 50% off any package we have for as long as your with us. Again, this will only be available for a limited short time. :wink:
Click to expand...

Wow! This is a fantastic deal! Makes me think about canceling my service and re-signing up. (j/k)

Anyway, I been with David and Dryline for almost 2yrs and the only problem I had was from my own fat fingers. But when I did, David was the first to step up and help me! How can you go wrong with a hosting service where you personally know the admin? To me it wasn’t a matter of $5/mo or $10/mo it is the quality of the service. I’m going to spend X amount on hosting every month no matter what, so why not spend it with someone I know is working for me.
 
I have used dryline hosting since late 04.. 1.5 yrs or more I guess.. Dave is easy to work with and he has very competitive pricing. Especially for streaming ;)

my 2cents
 
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